Obama: Stop playing politics with the law we’re delaying past the election, or something

posted at 2:01 pm on July 18, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

As one Twitterer put it after the remarks, publicly supporting ObamaCare is only about “fairness,” while opposing it is just “politics,” according to President Obama. At least that’s an improvement from earlier this week, when HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius implied that opposing the law was somehow fundamentally racist. Who says the national conversation can’t improve?

In a speech at the White House, which aides had framed as opportunity to highlight the more than $500 million in rebates consumers will be receiving from insurers in the coming weeks as a result of a provision in the law, Obama went after GOP lawmakers for continuing to take aim at the law.

“We’ve got a lot of problems in this country and there’s a lot work that congress needs to do…and yet we’re re-fighting these old battles,” Obama said. “Sometimes I just try to figure out why. Maybe, they think it’s good politics. ” …

Obama said that Republicans have ignored early successes of the law, such as the rebate provision, and accused them of trying to make “political hay” as his administration has worked to implement it.

“What I have heard is just the same old song and dance,” Obama said. “We’re just going to blow through that stuff and just keep on doing the right thing for the American people.”

Speaking of the same-old same-old, Reason wondered last month how many sales pitches it would take the White House to get people to understand it, let alone ignore the obvious problems in it once they did. CNN’s Gloria Borger points out what Obama didn’t talk about in his pep talk:

More bad news on the “political hay” front for Obama came a little earlier today, when Senate Democrat Joe Manchin decided to play politics, er, oppose ObamaCare in its current form (via The Corner):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=b6DAsZcGpvo

Senator Joe Manchin bucked his own party this morning and slammed Obamacare’s “far-reaching tentacles and ramifications.” He also criticized it for running counter to American values.

“As Americans, we don’t like to be told what we have to do,” the West Virginia Democrat said on Fox News,”and if we don’t do it, you’re going to penalize me as my country, as my government.”

Coming from a union-heavy state, Manchin expressed that union leaders are “concerned” about the law affecting employees’ hours and jobs, especially with the continued uncertainty of the law’s implementation and delays.

“There’s a lot of things that aren’t answered,” he said. “And it’s got to be addressed and fixed.”

It would be better if we just stopped breaking things with this law, rather than trying to fix the law itself. In my column today for The Fiscal Times, I argue that the ACA has suppressed employment in the Great Stagnation following the Great Recession, and that the incentives built into the core of the law guarantees more of the same:

Critics complain that stagnant job growth results from the extra cost to employment from Obamacare, while supporters of the ACA claim either that job growth isn’t a problem or that its lack is unrelated to the health-care reform. A new study, however, shows that there may be a direct and unanticipated impact on the jobs market when the bill’s mandate comes fully into force.

The National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that the creation of the individual mandate and its exchanges might prompt as many as 940,000 people to drop out of the workforce. They would quit their jobs because working for employer-provided benefits would no longer be necessary.

Yahoo’s Rick Newman noted that this has both positive and negative potential outcomes. It might push older workers to retire early before becoming eligible for Medicare and allow spouses providing second incomes to stay at home. Nancy Pelosi argued in the final days of the Obamacare debate that this would allow others to take more risks as entrepreneurs and artists.

However, that dumps nearly a million more workers into taxpayer-provided subsidies than initially estimated (with the rosier job-creation projections in mind as well). That means higher costs up front for Obamacare, and at the same time increased risk of even higher safety-net spending if the drop-outs cannot sustain themselves without a full-time job.

Be sure to read it all, including my assessment of the shortage of artists the nation would suffer without ObamaCare.

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If Obamacare was such a wonderful thing, something that would actually drive down the costs of medical treatment, save trillions, and was just soooo good for everybody…by now don’t you think that everybody, regardless of race, color, creed, national origin or political party would be out there jumping on the bandwagon with delight?

It ain’t.

And seems the majority of Americans are not.

As an old law professor said in class a long time ago, bad law written for all the best of reasons, is still bad law.

And, for Mr. Obama, why grant all those waivers…if Obamacare is the “right” thing for America?

Obamacare was built on lies and was forced through into law against the majority will of the people. It is wholy UN-Constitutional based several issues:
1) The religeous mandate is completely Un-Constitutional on the religeous mandate, 2) The ‘Fine’ was found to be Un-Constitutional by the SCOTUS – which is why Chief Justice Roberts had to violate the Constitution by re-writing the bill twice to save it before declaring a tax, nor a fine is ok, & 3) What part of the Constitution/Law allows a President to step in and use a LAW like a buffet or a la carte menu, deciding to unfairly delay implementation of the law for 1 group of Americans but not another?

The ink wasn’t even dry on is signature when it was 1st passed befofe he was already handing out waivers, exposing the bill no one (politicians) even read before it was passed as a HORRIBLE BILL. Now every time we starting bumping up on an implementation deadline of a horrible piece of the bill Obama wants to hand out waivers to specific select groups.

NO! The bill was passed as a whole, and it should be implemented entirely as a whole! If Obama wants to acknowledge this was a mistake and get behind scrapping it and doing it the right way, then great…but as Pelosi said…THEY obviously had to wait for the bill to be passed before THEY found out what was in it as well! Now that they know, even the Unions and Democrats are yelling about this bill!

Yeah Barry. Like granting 3 year waivers on ObamaCare to favored unions. Waving the scheduled October 2012 ‘fix’ to Medicare until after the 2012 elections. Waving the ‘employer mandate’ until after the 2014 elections.

Were not 300 million of the 330 million Americans insured prior to Obamacare?

Rebates: Going only to 8.5 million people. Of those, 2/3 of the refunds going to employers, so individuals see no benefit. Once it is all said and done, 2.7 million, OR 1% OF ALL AMERICANS WILL BENEFIT.

They tried for decades and decades to pass this turd and when they do, we are not supposed to spend time trying to repeal it? No, as soon as they get the result that they want, they stop counting the ballots. Now it is an “old battle” that shouldn’t be waged anymore. Now it is “settled”. Why wasn’t it settled after the last eighteen times that they tried to pass it? Why did they get to try again and again? Oh, yeah, because they lost.

They do the exact same thing with recounting ballots; they will recount a hundred times until they get a single winning result and then they claim that that is the final recount and nobody else can do another one. Isn’t that right Senator Al Franken?

Man, I hate this crap. Oh, and by the way Obama, they have only voted to repeal it twice. The other votes were for changing it to make it better, but you never really worry about facts or truth, do you?